Speed Date / MIA ČOPÍKOVÁ, jewellery designer

Photo: Viki Kollerova.

Where are you from?
Kremnica.

Where did you study?
AFAD and University of Trier in Germany.

Who was your best teacher?
Theo Smeets.

Who were/ are your parents?
A doctor, a mechanical engineer.

What don’t you enjoy in design?
Change materials for cheaper ones, because of the price.

And on the contrary, what do you?
Doing customized things.

What do you listen to?
Cigarettes after sex.

Your favourite film or cartoon?
Lucifer.

Who do you respect as an authority in and out of your field?
Ruudt Peters, for his unflagging inventiveness.

What thing did you last buy?
Closed steel profiles for furniture.

Do you buy professional literature? What was the latest book?
Last week Co Bauhaus dal – a co vzal, by Jan Michl, but I’m not entirely on board with it.

Do you vote?
Yes.

Who throws the best parties?
Tough question, I don’t even remember anymore.

Your favourite dome?
Il Duomo by Brunelleschi, if a band, Thom Yorke.

Party dress. Made by…?
FRL.

Your hero from the past?
Xena.

Best/nicest house?
A minimalist, brutalist, over-lit house on the cliffs of the sea.

Do you have any stereotypes when you work? How do they show?
I choose the materials I work with very carefully.

What’s on your desktop?
I have two desktops, a workbench (drill, hammer, pliers, mirror scraps, pencil, ruler, paper, coffee). I have a default apple background in my computer, dotted with icons.

Best exhibition, work of art?
Tate Gallery, The Weather Project by Olafur Eliasson, 2003.

What do you respect both from the local and foreign design scene? And why?
It’s a difficult question, because I respect all those who try to create and translate their ideas into art, design, architecture.

Ethics or money?
The balance between the two. Sometimes I’ll make a gold pendant for money that I don’t like aesthetically. But for example, I fundamentally refuse to make copies of other jewelry.

Extraordinary book?
Zdroj (The Fountainhead), Ayn Rand.

Optimist, pessimist, nihilist?
I try to be optimistic.

Do you have any hobby?
I like to walk a lot (in the woods, in the city, in the hills).

Solo or in a collective?
I like to work individually, but I like to have people around me, helpers, consultants, coffee drinkers…

Slovakia as the Promised Land?
I tried living abroad 1 year in the USA, 2 years in Germany, 2 years in Italy. But home is home. Traveling, “artists in residence” – definitely yes.

miacopikova.com
@ miacopikova
17 / 5 / 2021
by MAG D A
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